Environmental Land Artist

​Sculpture cast from the surface of the land.
Richard Watts casts the surfaces of old-growth trees, river stone, and weathered boats in vulcanized latex and layered cotton. Lit from within, each relief work reads like an X-ray of a changing landscape.
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His work has been exhibited in museums across Canada and commissioned for public and architectural spaces.

Grandmother Red Pine Dress

Earth Etching · Vulcanized Latex & Gauze · Backlit
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Cast from the bark skin of an old red pine and lit from within, this work holds the tree like a glowing X-ray of time and change. 72 x 54 inches.

Insect Writing: Human Writing/Nature's Writing

Earth Etching · Cast from insect-marked cedar log

Casts of the marks ants and beetles chew into living trees and bark, which come out looking like musical scores, heart-monitor lines and ancient cuneiform. Richard accents the traces in gold, silver, other metallic pigments, and carbon, then sets them against his own chainsaw marks, human writing beside nature's. Each pull from the tree fades a little, so the later prints show the pattern quietly disappearing, a record of the sixth extinction. Shown at the Lausanne to Beijing Fibre Art Biennale.

Canoe People

Backlit Relief · Cedar-Strip Canoe · Distillery Beams

Backlit relief cast from a vintage cedar-strip canoe from the Kawarthas and 300-year-old beams from Toronto's Distillery District. A history of North America, iconically Canadian. The canoe forms are archetypes of life's journey, and how this continent was first travelled, in wood, bone, skin, and vessels along its water ways. In Richard's cocoon-and-transformation process, forms emerge like a butterfly leaving the chrysalis. 78 x 65 inches.

Mason Boat

Impression from a boat hull · A diptych

​An impression lifted from the bottom of an old cottage fishing boat found at the Havelock Dump, the paint colours fading on the hull. It describes the liminal space between the water and the boat, again life's journey - the crossing over the Styx. Look closely, one piece might have the side profile of a fisherman coming into shore. Water and nets. A diptych. 48 x 60 inches.

Earth Etchings Tom Thomson Memorial Gallery

Earth Etchings

An exploration of environmental and climate change issues in various media, emphasizing connections between urban and wilderness experiences, and between people and nature (June - September, 2019).

1. 2. 3. Canoe People triptych, 4. Surfacing (Prow), 5. Grandmother Pine Skin Dress, 6. Turtle Island, 7. Thunderbird, 8. Spirit Canoe

Salmon Run

Salmon Run · Public Commission · Kelowna

Three twenty-foot steel forms set beside a salmon river along the Mission Creek Greenway. Oxidized steel and granite, the ribbed hulls echoing canoe and fish skeletons. 18 x 6 x 5 ft, 2006.

Ark

Ark · A fishing boat reborn under the Manhattan Bridge

A 35-foot vintage fishing boat from Georgian Bay, sandblasted and gutted, then pierced with utility pipes into a kind of walking boat and whale. Richard calls the sandblasting the sound of history passing. It was installed beneath the Manhattan Bridge in 2007 as a transitional object related to climate change issues between Canada and the United States, and the sandblasting film sits in the Christo and Jeanne-Claude collection.
What it is...

Not Paintings

​Original
One-of-kind
​Each piece is a relief object, not a print or a canvas. Watts casts the skin of a tree, a rock face or an old boat in vulcanized latex and layered cotton, then reveals the surface with metallic pigment and light.

Lit from behind in an LED lightbox, the works glow like an X-ray of the land. The same pieces can be front-lit for a gallery wall, or shown unlit as raw artifacts.
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For public and commercial settings, the works sit comfortably behind acrylic or in a custom vitrine, in keeping with their nature as pieces of history.
​Framed relief works with built-in adjustable LED lighting, from about 30 inches to gallery scale.

Public Art
Site-specific

Oxidized-steel canoe and fish forms, and suspended installations, at architectural scale.

Editions
Limited Prints

​Durable limited-edition prints on aluminium for higher-traffic spaces.

Commissions
Made for a space

​Pieces developed around a room, a lobby or a landscape, with your team.

Selected History
2026   From Lausanne to Beijing, 13th International Fibre Art Biennale, Tsinghua University Art Museum, Beijing
2024   CODAworx CODAsummit, Cincinnati
2019   Earth Etchings, solo survey, Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound
2014   Two Rivers Gallery (Museum) Prince George B.C.
2014   International Earth Art Exhibition Royal Botanical Gardens Hamilton, Ontario curated John K Grande 
2012   MacLaren Art Centre Ontario (Barrie)
2007   Ark, beneath the Manhattan Bridge, New York
2006   Salmon Run, public commission, City of Kelowna, British Columbia

Catalogues

Keep my work on file

Keep my work on file, or talk about a project. I would be glad to be considered for future commissions and installations. 
richardwattssculpture.com, [email protected], 647 233 8127
ALL WORK © 2026. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.